Not to detract from your otherwise excellent point and story, but I take a bit of issue with: > (who previously had tried the "mom will stop drinking if we ign

Not to detract from your otherwise excellent point and story, but I take a bit of issue with: > (who previously had tried the "mom will stop drinking if we ignore her" strategy) As someone who's been the child in that situation, sometimes you really just need an extended break from dealing with a parent's addiction. It's extremely stressful and really hard to get over the resentment stemming from a childhood destroyed by a parent's addiction. Some people are more resilient and can be there for their addicted parents as adults, but I think it's a little unfair to fault people for needing to distance themselves from their often traumatic childhoods. It's a bit like blaming soldiers for not continuing their military service after suffering a PTSD-inducing event (which hopefully we can agree is not behavior we should encourage). Sorry if you weren't trying to imply blame or fault on the children, but that does happen fairly regularly.